SU Pipes Partially Rusticated Panel Blowfish w/ Horn Handmade Briar Pipe, New

Description

You may have wondered, as I often do, what would happen if professional meerschaum carver was to turn their attention to briar wood, and to make pipes out of that instead. While many early briar pipe manufacturers, such as Frederick Charatan, made just such a transition back in the late 19th century, both briar and meerschaum pipe manufacture have changed significantly in the century since, making for an interesting opportunity. Enter Sebahattin Urgan of SU Pipes, former apprentice to Eskişehir’s master of meerschaum Emre Bay and now an expert carver in his own right. Urgan’s talents have in recent years extended to handcrafting briar pipes, having been greatly inspired by the legends of Scandinavian and post-Scandinavian design.

While the blowfish is a staple of Scandinavian, or Danish-style, pipe making, there is a minor schism over exactly what counts as a “true” blowfish shape. After all, some blowfish shapes are very round, while others are decidedly “flat” on their horizontal axis, leading some to consider the former to be a blowfish proper and the latter to instead be a “disc,” or something of the like. It’s the difference, for example, between a typical Lars Ivarsson blowfish and one by Peter Heeschen. And then there are some blowfishes that complicate things even further, but in the best ways possible. In the more contemporary artisan world, there are the blowfish renditions of figures such as David Huber and Andrey Kharitonov, for example, that use folds and panels to add further layers to the shape’s overall figure, creating something that doesn’t fit neatly into the Ivarssonian mold, nor the Heeschenian. This partially rusticated blowfish from Sebahattin Urgan joins in on that lively disruption of pipe making conventions. Incorporating folds, furls, and facets, this “speeding” sitter rendition is yet another fascinating evolution of a shape with even more “species” than its namesake.

As this is one of Urgan’s favorite works, it comes with a custom-fitted clam-shell case.

 

Details:

Length: 5.6″ / 142.2mm

Bowl Width: 0.80 / 20.32mm

Bowl Depth: 1.76″ / 44.70mm

Weight: 3.0oz / 86g